Posts Tagged "Natural Gas"

Australian agricultural companies are embracing renewables as a more affordable source of power for their energy-intensive enterprises. The firm Nectar Farms is undertaking a massive $565 million expansion of its new hydroponics business in the state of Victoria,...

“The whole utility paradigm has shifted. We really are doing our ratepayers a disservice by not considering all viable options.”

– Reiko Kerr, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power’s senior assistant general manager of power systems, regarding a decision by the utility to put a hold on a $2.2 billion plan to rebuild several old natural gas power plants while it studies clean energy alternatives.

California energy officials are, for the first time, rethinking plans to build expensive natural gas power plants in the face of an electricity glut and growing use of cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has put a...

Oregon’s Portland General Electric has suspended efforts to permit two new natural gas plants in Boardman, at the site of the state’s only coal-burning power plant, which is being retired. Following outcry by ratepayers and independent power producers,...

New legislation proposed in Congress calls on the United States to transition off all fossil fuels by 2050. The 100×50 Act would impose new federal mandates requiring vehicles in the United States to release zero carbon emissions, while barring federal approval of oil...

Americans used more renewable energy in 2016 compared to the previous year, while coal use fell and gas remained essentially flat, according to the most recent energy flow charts released by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. With prices for photovoltaic panels...

While wind and solar projects may have benefitted from tax credits, data show that renewable energy will remain highly competitive even when subsidies are gone. The levelized prices for power from utility-scale solar projects (5 megawatts and larger) declined by 73...

The city of Duluth, Minnesota is embarking on a new $21 million energy initiative geared toward cutting coal consumption by 40 percent. The project was unveiled at a press conference on April 12 held symbolically in an empty coal bin at the city’s coal-burning power...

Growth trends in renewables and energy efficiency are starting to be felt in energy markets across the United States. Together, renewables and efficiency will cut the equivalent of 2 billion cubic feet of fossil fuel demand per day by 2020, according Wood Mackenzie....

“If [NGS] were to shut down tomorrow, we wouldn’t have any problem keeping our costs fairly low in this market.”

– Ron Lunt, director of operations for the Central Arizona Project, on how a surplus of natural gas generation and a deluge of California solar have thrown the Southwest’s power market into flux, including the announced closure of coal-fired Navajo Generating Station. CAP anticipates annual savings of $38.5 million by getting power from cheaper sources than NGS.

Consumers across the United States have seen flat or declining energy costs as renewable energy becomes a greater part of the nation’s energy mix, according to findings from Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s 2017 Sustainable Energy in America Factbook....

As a result of New England’s grid operator procuring enough resources to ensure sufficient capacity through May 2021 at low prices, questions are arising about the wisdom of proposals to build new natural gas plants. In its annual capacity auction, ISO-New...

A record number of oil and gas companies became insolvent in the United Kingdom 2016, according to a new study highlighting the need for the nation to move to a low-carbon economy. The study by accounting firm Moore Stephens documented 16 oil and gas companies that...

Tired of overpaying for power they produce, the utilities that own the largest coal-burning power plant west of the Mississippi have decided to close the plant when their land lease expires at the end of 2019. With market prices for power roughly 50 percent cheaper...

“In California, we’re blinding ourselves to the facts, We’re awash in power at a premium price. … The winners are the energy companies. The losers are businesses and families.”

– Loretta Lynch, former president of the California Public Utilities Commission, arguing that allowing utilities to dramatically overbuild natural gas power plant capacity has left consumers paying far more than the national average for electricity.

More people were employed in solar power sector in 2016 than in generating electricity through coal, gas and oil energy combined, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Energy. The solar sector power employed 43 percent of the entire workforce involved...

A new interdisciplinary study from researchers at the University of Texas at Austin that documents electricity costs for every county in the nation shows that wind and gas are the lowest-cost technology options for new generation across much of the country when...

Last year was a record breaker for energy in Britain, with electricity the cleanest it’s been in 60 years as coal collapsed and renewables rose to never-before-seen levels. In 2016, just 9.3 percent of British electricity came from coal, the lowest share ever in...

Hawaiian Electric Co.’s new energy plan, which will be the framework for the energy industry in Hawaii in the coming years, does not include the use of liquefied natural gas as a replacement for oil, a plan killed when NextEra’s bid to take over Hawaiian...

A coal-fired power plant on Navajo Nation land in Arizona, along with the coal mine that supplies it, may have to close this year in the face of low natural-gas prices that are making the plant increasingly uneconomic to run. Arizona’s Salt River Project,...

Renewable energy resources provided 56 percent of the electricity consumed in Denmark in 2015, according to data released by the Danish government in the its Energy Statistics 2015 report. The largest contribution of clean energy came from wind power, which supplied...

“Our customers mining for coal, oil and gas, as well as those in coal-fired electricity generation and related industries, are increasingly exposed and may experience transition risk as a result of decreasing demand for fossil fuels and increasing demand for clean energy.”

An Arizona Corporation Commissioner is criticizing plans by one of the state’s biggest utilities to dramatically expand its natural gas capacity. In letters to Arizona Public Service, Commissioner Andy Tobin chided the utility for its plans to increase gas...

“Divestment is speeding up the clock on the final accounting that will show fossil fuels are out and clean energy is in.”

– Former Mobil Oil executive Lou Allstadt, quoted in The Guardian in reaction to a report by Arabella investment advisors showing that the value of investment funds worldwide that are committed to selling off coal, oil and natural gas assets has jumped to $5.2 trillion, doubling in just over a year.

“We have decided to initiate a process with the aim of ultimately exiting from our oil and gas business.”

– DONG Energy President and CEO Henrik Poulsen on the Denmark-based company’s decision to focus more exclusively on developing its renewable energy holdings. DONG has seven large offshore wind projects currently under construction globally.

According to a new study on the Texas power market, cheaper natural gas and the declining cost of solar energy are effectively cleaning up the state’s power industry, lowering emissions and pushing older coal plants off the grid. The analysis, conducted by the...

Total natural gas usage across Texas fell more than 26 percent month on month for October 2016, according to the latest data from the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, which operates the state’s transmission grid and wholesale energy market. Gas-fired...

While there is a significant partisan split among Americans regarding climate issues, according to public opinion research by the Pew Research Center, one spot of unity in an otherwise divided environmental policy landscape is that the vast majority of Americans...

While Minnesota utility regulators have approved plans by Xcel Energy’s to shut down a large coal-fired power plant (see “Minn. PUC OKs ambitious clean energy plan”) they were not sold on the utility’s plans to replace most of the capacity with a...